I cleared the Scoreboard off my display and opened up my grail diary, which had now grown into a vast mountain of data containing every scrap of information I’d collected since the contest began. It appeared as a jumble of cascading windows floating in front of me, displaying text, maps, photos, and audio and video files, all indexed, cross-referenced, and pulsing with life.
I kept the Quatrain open in a window that was always on top. Four lines of text. Twenty-four words. Thirty-four syllables. I’d stared at them so often and for so long that they’d nearly lost all meaning. Looking at them again now, I had to resist the urge to scream in rage and frustration.
The captain conceals the Jade Key
in a dwelling long neglected
But you can only blow the whistle
once the trophies are all collected
I knew the answer was right there in front of me. Art3mis had already figured it out.
I read over my notes about John Draper, aka Captain Crunch, and the toy plastic whistle that had made him famous in the annals of hacker lore. I still believed that these were the “captain” and “whistle” Halliday was referring to. But the rest of the Quatrain’s meaning remained a mystery.
But now I possessed a new piece of information—the key was somewhere in Sector Seven. So I pulled up my OASIS atlas and began to search for planets with names I thought might somehow be related to the Quatrain. I found a few worlds named after famous hackers, like Woz and Mitnick, but none named after John Draper. Sector Seven also contained hundreds of worlds named after old Usenet newsgroups, and on one of these, the planet alt.phreaking, there was a statue of Draper posing with an ancient rotary phone in one hand and a Cap’n Crunch whistle in the other. But the statue had been erected three years after Halliday’s death, so I knew it was a dead end.
I read through the Quatrain yet again, and this time the last two lines jumped out at me:
But you can only blow the whistle
once the trophies are all collected
Trophies. Somewhere in Sector Seven. I needed to find a collection of trophies in Sector Seven.
I did a quick search of my files on Halliday. From what I could tell, the only trophies he’d ever owned were the five Game Designer of the Year awards he’d won back around the turn of the century. These trophies were still on display in the GSS Museum in Columbus, but there were replicas of them on display inside the OASIS, on a planet called Archaide.
And Archaide was located in Sector Seven.
The connection seemed thin, but I still wanted to check it out. At the very least, it would make me feel like I was doing something productive for the next few hours.
I glanced over at Max, who was currently doing the samba on one of my command center’s monitors. “Max, prep the Vonnegut for takeoff. If you’re not too busy.”
Max stopped dancing and smirked at me. “You got it, El Comanchero!”
I got up and walked over to my stronghold’s elevator, which I’d modeled after the turbolift on the original Star Trek series. I rode down four levels to my armory, a massive vault filled with storage shelves, display cases, and weapon racks. I pulled up my avatar’s inventory display, which appeared as a classic “paper doll” diagram of my avatar, onto which I could drag and drop various items and pieces of equipment.
Archaide was located in a PvP zone, so I decided to upgrade my gear and wear my Sunday best. I put on my gleaming +10 Hale Mail powered armor, then strapped on my favorite set of blaster pistols and slung a pump-action pistol-grip shotgun across my back, along with a +5 Vorpal Bastard Sword. I also grabbed a few other essential items. An extra pair of antigrav boots. A Ring of Magic Resistance. An Amulet of Protection. Some Gauntlets of Giant Strength. I hated the idea of needing something and not having it with me, so I usually ended up carrying enough equipment for three gunters. When I ran out of room on my avatar’s body, I stored the additional gear in my Backpack of Holding.
Once I was properly outfitted, I hopped back on the elevator, and a few seconds later I arrived at the entrance of my hangar, located on the bottom level of my stronghold. Pulsing blue lights lined the runway, which ran up the center of the hangar to a massive pair of armored doors at the far end. These doors opened into the launch tunnel, which led up to a matching set of armored doors set into the asteroid’s surface.